The other night, I saw a very good low-budget movie by a great young filmmaker. The story addressed the modern condition of trying to be a moral person when soulless technology invades every corner of our lives, to the point that our paranoia tears us apart. The script was terse and accomplished. Every line of dialogue was subtle and infused with dramatic interest. The acting was superb. The lighting and photography evoked the best of film noir without an ounce of nostalgia. And the budget was a mere $1.6 million, even though Harrison Ford was in the cast and studios easily spend that much on exercise equipment in his trailer.
The movie was The Conversation, written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and released fifty years ago.
The next night, I saw a film with a budget of $120 million. It was only twenty-five minutes longer than The Conversation, but its duration seemed triple. Many more famous people were in the cast, including the aging stars of Midnight Cowboy (who, for some reason, appear in the same shot but never speak). The production design was beyond opulent; it was Olympian. Viewers were encouraged to consider the glories of Rome, the best of modern cities, and the greatest possibilities for our future. There were massive crowd scenes, computer-generated spectacles, and lofty Shakespearian speeches. The themes concerned the nature of time, art, and family. But I did not understand what the creator was trying to say.
That movie was, of course, Megalopolis, the latest and probably last film we will get from Francis Ford Coppola.
Most people I know who have seen the film hated it. A few embraced it as a fever dream. Some of the guys in the bathroom at the Brooklyn multiplex where I saw at were enthusiastically confused. “I loved it!” said a bearded gent washing up at the sink beside the urinals. “I’ve never seen anything like it! But I have no idea what the fuck it was about.”
Let us not come to praise or bury Megalopolis. I thought the film was an expensive, incoherent mess. But I think the ssame about most major studio films with franchised cartoon characters. At least, I believe Coppola is sincere and trying to say something original. After all, he financed the film himself. So let us consider, as Coppola clearly wants us to, the nature of time and its effects on a great artist.
I saw The Conversation again at the suggestion of our youngest son. It was playing at the Paris Theater in Manhattan, which was built in 1948 and recently refurbished. Sometimes when you encounter old works late in adulthood, they don’t hold up. You notice all the obvious seams, creaks and manipulations that you missed when your eyes were fresher. The Conversation, however, kept its edge. Gene Hackman, playing the polar opposite of Popeye Doyle from The French Connection, is brilliant playing Harry Caul, an audio surveillance expert who realizes that his bugging skills have been used to destroy lives. The editing and sound design by Walter Murch is a story on its own, forcing you to lean in and implicate yourself as part of the audience. And the presence of John Cazale in any cast guarantees a film’s immortality. In fact, the only jarringly dated element was a hideous black-and-white sweater worn by Harrison Ford, playing a bland corporate henchman who likes to offer Christmas cookies at the office.
What’s even more remarkable about The Conversation is that it was shot between The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, which, for my money, are still two of the few truly canonical works of American art, pictures that have shaped the way we talk and think of ourselves. The Conversation isn’t a gangster epic like those two movies. It’s a quiet, contemplative art film. Coppola dictated the script to a transcriber when he was still an unknown filmmaker and initially approached Marlon Brando to play Harry, but got turned down. After the success of the first Godfather, Coppola had enough clout to raise a modest budget for the project. Even in a very good year for movies – Blazing Saddles, A Woman Under The Influence, and The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3 came out in 1974 as well - The Conversation was a critical standout.
But on the night I saw it at the Paris, there were maybe ten other people in the theater.
And my son overheard a young staffer grumbling, “I can’t believe people paid money to see that” after it was over. Whatever, dude. You’re right; it’s not like playing Minecraft. It’s pretty goddamn obvious that there’s not a huge American audience for quiet, contemplative films. There never really was. Though, fifty years ago, a critical support system existed that could publicize such pictures and maybe sell out the art houses in a few major cities.
The more poignant question is how someone like Francis Ford Coppola could make such outstanding works of art in his thirties – four of them if you count Apocalypse Now – and then end his career with Megalopolis.
It pains me to say it, but I don’t think any of his films have been that memorable since Martin Sheen’s head emerged from that swamp. Tucker and Gardens of Stone were okay, One From The Heart has its fans, and some people like his Dracula. But The Rainmaker? Peggy Sue Got Married? Jack with Robin Williams playing a child in an adult’s body? What puzzles me the most is looking at Coppola’s older films and being reminded that very few directors have his gift for making you feel you are actually in the room with the characters. It's true that in the Godfathers, he had Mario Puzo’s family story and Gordon Willis’s mad genius photography to provide a sense of life. But that same intimacy is present in The Conversation, which was written by Coppola with cinematography by Bill Butler.
Yet little in his filmography since then has the same light from within. Listening to present-day 85-year-old Coppola give a brief filmed introduction to The Conversation, I wondered if he was offering some clues. He mentioned that it was always his dream to direct stories of his own creation, as opposed to other people’s narratives like The Godfather. But, he confessed, he often lost perspective in the process and could not tell if his story and characters were interesting to anyone else.
That willingness to experiment and struggle is evident in Megalopolis, as is that loss of perspective. The thing is, I really wanted it to be great. Sometimes, artists get lost in the desert for decades and then somehow find their gift again closer to the end of the journey. I think something like that happened with Philip Roth in his late novels, Bob Dylan, and the film director Vittorio De Sica, who went through a long dry spell before concluding with The Garden of the Finzi-Continis a few years before he died.
It's a little disappointing that Coppola could not quite summon the same magic for his last picture – or at least I didn’t see it on first viewing. But maybe it’s more reasonable to be appreciative for what he has given us, especially when it includes a film as assured and unassuming as The Conversation.
De Sica had Dominque Sanda to inspire him…..and most importantly a compelling, heart wrenching story to tell….
I'm pretty sure Eddie Muller and Michael Connelly enjoyed The Conversation. So you're in good company there. It's been a long time. I think Siskel and Ebert gave it two thumbs up as well. I think.